In the fabrication of microelectronic devices for use in various electronic products, including, but not limited to portable products, such as portable computers, digital cameras, electronic tablets, cellular phones, and the like, a plurality of microelectronic dice are formed on a microelectronic wafer through a variety of processing step, which are well known in the art. As the various processing steps may have variances and other manufacturing issues, some of the individual microelectronic dice may have defects, which may render them inoperable. Therefore, either prior to or after wafer dicing, wherein each of the microelectronic dice are cut from the microelectronic wafer, electrical performance and reliability tests may be performed on the microelectronic dice to determine if any of the microelectronic dice have defects, such that the defective microelectronic dice can be scrapped or reworked prior to further fabrication processes.
As will be understood to those skilled in the art, probe cards, which are used to perform the electrical performance and reliability tests, may include components, such as space transformer, which may be fabricated from organic materials. Such organic based space transformers may have low stiffness and a large coefficient of thermal expansion relative to other components of the probe card. As will also be understood to those skilled in the art, test probes extend from the space transform to contact bond pads on the microelectronic die under test (DUT). However, the coefficient of thermal expansion mismatch between the organic based space transformer and the other components of the probe card may result in misalignment (in the X, Y, and/or Z directions) of the test probes with the bond pads on the microelectronic die under test. Thus, there is a need for solutions in the fabrication of probe cards to substantially reduce or eliminate such misalignment.